Where the pretty things are : design art craft fashion

Atelier Assemblé April 18, 2011

My baby is no longer a baby, but a little girl who’s very much interested in defining the world between boys and girls. Mummy is a girl, I am a girl, daddy is boy… that’s what we hear all day long. We’ve been very cautious around that issue and made sure not to dress her like a princess, buy her toys that were not always gender specific. Some people think that by doing so we’re denying her the right to be a little girl, but that’s not how we see it. We’d like for her to grow and be whatever she wants to be… not what society tells her she should be as girl… eg. wearing pink and glitters, only playing in the house with dolls and pretending to vacuum and clean (have you seen what sort of toys they do those days?) I want her to know that she has the choice, that being a girl doesn’t mean she has to wear pink all the time, that she can build things, be adventurous, be brave… and that boys can wear pink if they want to or play with dolls. But she’s growing… and is starting to want to define herself what it means to be a girl… for now it means pink and dresses. Whenever she sees something pink, she gets super excited and tells us it is for girl and she’s never so happy than when she gets to wear a dress.
So we’ve decided to make her wardrobe a little more girly… but we still don’t want to dress her all in pink, because it’s tarty (I know, I know… this is a little exaggerated now). Today I was browsing around for kids clothing when I came across Atelier Assemblé. And this is exactly the type of clothes I want to buy for her: cute and colourful. The two creators of Atelier Assemblé collect vintage fabrics from the 50s, 60s and 70s to create beautiful piece of clothing for boys and girls from 2 to 10 years old. Those actually reminds me of clothes that my mum made for me when I was a little girl, I wish I could actually use a sewing machine properly, because there’s nothing more special than to wear a dress made by your mum.